‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’ Is the End of Harry Potter’s Story

Last night, midnight madness returned to book stores as the script for the stage production of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child was made available as a book for readers to soak up as a makeshift eighth installment of the Harry Potter book series. Even though this is a much different piece of writing than Potter fans are used to reading, they still turned out in droves to find out what happens to The Boy Who Lived now that he’s a 37-year old father of three children and an overworked employee of the Ministry of Magic.

With all this interest in Harry Potter emerging again, despite the fact that this isn’t a traditional addition to the stories of the wizarding world, can we expect the story of Hogwarts most famous student to continue? Unfortunately, author J.K. Rowling says that with the release of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child this weekend, “Harry is done now.” Find out what else the author had to say after the jump.

Reuters was on-hand in London on Saturday for the premiere of the play, and they spoke to J.K. Rowling about the release of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child as a book, asking if this was the beginning of a new phase of stories for Harry. Rowling was very quick to answer:

“No, no. He goes on a very big journey during these two plays and then, yeah, I think we’re done. This is the next generation, you know. So, I’m thrilled to see it realized so beautifully but, no, Harry is done now.”

The play is unique not only because it’s the first time there’s been an officially sanctioned stage production that takes place in the world of Harry Potter, but J.K. Rowling did not write the entirety of the play herself as she did with the books that inspired it. While Rowling did work with playwright Jack Thorne on the story, she was not responsible for writing the playbook itself, leaving Thorne and director John Tiffany to their own devices.

Running five hours and split into two parts, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child sounds like it should be meaty enough to satisfy Harry Potter fans as the last story we’ll see following the grown up boy wizard (at least for the foreseeable future). However, there’s just something about this story that doesn’t feel nearly as exciting as any of the previous Harry Potter book releases. Even with Rowling saying that she’s done with Harry Potter centric stories now, I don’t feel any immediate need to read this story, and it doesn’t sound like I’m the only one.

So far the reviews from the play’s premiere have been extremely positive, and reviews of the playbook indicate that it might have just enough magic to make it worth reading. So hopefully fans find it satisfying enough.

The good news is that Harry Potter fans won’t have long to wait before returning to the wizard world on the big screen. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them arrives on November 18 (watch the most recent trailer), giving us a new character to follow in the form of Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne), who must track down a bunch of escaped magical creatures before they risk exposing the wizarding world to Muggles (or No-Maj) in the United States.

J.K. Rowling wrote the screenplay for the spin-off all on her own and she’s already working on the sequels. So even though we may not get anymore Harry Potter stories, she’s still working on bringing us plenty of magic in the future, so hopefully it will fill the void left by a lack of The Boy Who Lived.